This paper focuses on a methodological question regarding a content analysis tool in populism studies, namely the explicit and implicit populism approach. The study argues that scholars adopting this approach need to conduct content analysis simultaneously on different coding unit lengths, because the ratio of explicit and implicit messages varies significantly between units such as single sentences and paragraphs. While an explicit populist message consists of at least one articulated dichotomy between the “good” people and the “harmful” others, implicit populism (...) implies that only one of the core features of the populist style is present: either people-centrism or antagonism. Due to the often fractured and occasionally dichotomous nature of populist styles, this research revolves around the idea that the explicit and implicit populist content analysis method should be performed on coding units of different lengths, as these units can yield significantly different results in the detection of populist styles. Hybrid content and statistical analyses were operationalized to scrutinize to what extent explicit, implicit, or non-populist styles change in three coding unit types with diverging lengths. The outcome supports the following suggestion: Explicit and implicit populism demand scrutiny simultaneously on one narrow and one extended textual unit. (shrink)

What are mental states? When we talk about people’s beliefs or desires, are we talking about what is happening inside their heads? If so, might cognitive science show that we are wrong? Might it turn out that mental states do not exist? Mental fictionalism offers a new approach to these longstanding questions about the mind. Its core idea is that mental states are useful fictions. When we talk about mental states, we are not formulating hypotheses about people’s inner machinery. Instead, (...) we simply talk "as if" people had certain inner states, such as beliefs or desires, in order to make sense of their behaviour. This is the first book dedicated to exploring mental fictionalism. Featuring contributions from established authors as well as up-and-coming scholars in this burgeoning field, the book reveals the exciting potential of a fictionalist approach to the mind, as well as the challenges it faces. In doing so, it offers a fresh perspective on foundational debates in the philosophy of mind, such as the nature of mental states and folk psychology, as well as hot topics in the field, such as embodied cognition and mental representation. Mental Fictionalism: Philosophical Explorations essential reading for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and professionals alike. (shrink)

Mehmet Kaplan ve Nihad Sâmi Banarlı’nın kültürel kimlikle ilgili görüşlerini inceleyen bu çalışma yakın dönem Türk tarihinde kültürel kimlik düşüncesinin değişim sürecinin anlaşılmasına katkı sunmayı hedeflemektedir. Bu amaçla 1940’lardan 1980’lere uzanan ve birer seçki niteliği taşıyan, Mehmet Kaplan’ın Kültür ve Dil, Nihad Sâmi Banarlı’nın ise Türkçenin Sırları adlı eserlerine odaklanmaktadır. Çalışmada Türkiye’de kimlik ve kültürle ilgili tartışmalar üzerinde kısaca durulmakta; Kaplan ve Banarlı’nın çalışmalarında kültürün konumundan söz edilmektedir. Ardından literatürden hareketle kültür ve kimlik kavramları ele alınmakta; Kaplan ve Banarlı’nın Türkiye’nin (...) kültürel kimliği algısı tartışılmaktadır. Kaplan ve Banarlı’nın kültürel kimlikte dil ve edebiyata nasıl yer verdikleri dil, edebiyat ve kültür birlikteliği; Türkçe ve diğer diller; dilde tasfiyecilik ile edebî simalar ve Yahya Kemâl başlıkları altında incelenmektedir. Her iki yazarın da dil ve edebiyatı kültüre eşdeğer gördüğü, Türkçenin geleceği için geçmişinin iyi bilinmesi gereğine dikkat çektiği ifade edilmektedir. Kaplan ve Banarlı’nın dilde tasfiyecilikle ilgili görüşleri ise Atatürk’ün dile yaklaşımının süregelen etkileri, dile yönelik yanlış tutumların eleştirisi ve dile yaklaşımda sağlıklı olan yöntemin tespiti bağlamında ele alınmaktadır. Mehmet Kaplan ve Nihad Sâmi Banarlı’nın Türk diline ve Türk edebiyatına sahip çıkarak Türk kültürel kimliğini korumanın mümkün olduğunu düşündükleri gösterilmekte; incelenen eserlerin devlet kurumları, siyasetçiler, toplumun geneli ve özelde gençleri muhatap alarak harekete geçirmeyi hedeflediği iddia edilmektedir. (shrink)

This study considers the role of different cognitive units in sound change: phonemes, contextual variants and words. We examine /u/-fronting and /j/-dropping in data from three generations of Derby English speakers. We analyze dynamic formant data and auditory judgments, using mixed effects regression methods, including generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs). /u/-fronting is reaching its end-point, showing complex conditioning by context and a frequency effect that weakens over time. /j/-dropping is declining, with low-frequency words showing more innovative variants with /j/ than (...) high-frequency words. The two processes interact: words with variable /j/-dropping (new) exhibit more fronting than words that never have /j/ (noodle) even when the /j/ is deleted. These results support models of change that rely on phonetically detailed representations for both word- and sound-level cognitive units. (shrink)

Scarlett Marton desenvolveu um trabalho apresenta ao leitor uma trajetória pontuada por um dos traços nietzschianos - o questionamento permanente. Dessa maneira, a autora pretende recuperar interpretações que tomaram o debate filosófico em diferentes momentos, colocando-as lado a lado.

Explores the impact of Enlightenment philosophers in Scotland on the development of sociology The first collection to look at the significance of the Scottish Enlightenment for sociological thought, this book explores how and what sociological ideas were developed during this period. It also analyses how the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment would emerge and develop in subsequent traditions of sociology. Scottish Enlightenment thinkers developed and refined a descriptive-explanatory approach and methodology to explore social and economic processes, an approach that was (...) different from the normative and justificatory aspirations of 17th- and 18th-century social and political philosophies. This distinct contribution of the Scottish Enlightenment is frequently overlooked, even if some of its central figures - Adam Ferguson, David Hume, Adam Smith, to name but three - are acknowledged as important forerunners of contemporary social sciences. This book offers both a synoptic perspective on individual contributions and a connective view of theoretical achievements that are otherwise typically treated in isolation. Tamás Demeter is Professor of Philosophy at the Corvinus University of Budapest and Senior Research Fellow at the HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities, Budapest. (shrink)

Antropologia individualistica e democrazia -- Nuova antropologia. Soggetto e libertà nella democrazia di Tocqueville -- Sball-democrazia -- Simboli del potere -- Oltre la frontiera. Soggettività globale -- Ecity. Tecnica senza storia.

In recent years, the attention of scholars to the figure and work of Iamblichus has increased, while the emphasis is on his thought in the history of the Platonic school. However, a major work still remains to be studied: the De Anima. Preserved only in fragments in the anthology of Stobaeus, it proves to be of crucial importance for the understanding of the development of Platonism at the end of antiquity.

We consider a real-valued function f defined on the set of infinite branches X of a countably branching pruned tree T. The function f is said to be a limsup function if there is a function $u \colon T \to \mathbb {R}$ such that $f(x) = \limsup _{t \to \infty } u(x_{0},\dots,x_{t})$ for each $x \in X$. We study a game characterization of limsup functions, as well as a novel game characterization of functions of Baire class 1.

In this paper I reconstruct the central concept of the young Lukács’s and Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge, as they present it in their writings in the early decades of the twentieth century. I argue that this concept, namely Weltanschauung, is used to refer to some conceptually unstructured totality of feelings, which they take to be a condition of possibility of intellectual production, and this understanding is contrasted to an alternative construal of the term that presents it as logically structured, quasi-theoretical (...) background knowledge. This concept has Kantian reminiscences: it is a condition of possibility of intellectual production in general. The young Mannheim and Lukács rely on ‘Weltanschauung’ so understood as a phenomenon mediating between the facts of society and individual intellectual production and reception: it is seen as being conditioned by sociological facts and therefore as a historical and sociological category through which, and therefore indirectly, society enters into intellectual production. (shrink)

This chapter introduces several versions of mental fictionalism, along with the main lines of objection and reply. It begins by considering the debate between eliminative materialism (“eliminativism”) versus realism about mental states as conceived in “folk psychology” (i.e., beliefs, desires, intentions, etc.). Mental fictionalism offers a way to transcend the debate by allowing talk of mental states without a commitment to realism. The idea is to treat folk psychology as a “story” and three different elaborations of this are reviewed. First, (...) prefix semantics paraphrases a sentence like ‘Biden believes that Trump lost’ as ‘According to folk psychology, Biden believes that Trump lost’, whereby ontological commitment to belief is avoided. Similarly, pretense theory suggests that we do not assert ‘Biden believes that Trump lost’, but only pretend to assert it. Third, affective theory proposes that such discourse is used in a metaphorical way to understand a person’s affective and dispositional states vis-a-vis the community. The main objections concern whether folk psychology has the features of storytelling, and whether mental fictionalism ends up being self-refuting. The chapter also recaps a less discussed fictionalist view about “qualia” or phenomenal states, and closes by summarizing the papers contained in the volume. (shrink)

The paper contrasts Robert Brandom’s account of rationality with that of Daniel Dennett. It argues that neither of them is tenable, and sketches an alternative outlook that avoids the problems. In spite of their fundamental differences, both Brandom and Dennett employ a robust, i.e. explanatory and predictive notion of rationality, and for different reasons they both fail to offer a plausible theory supporting it. The lesson offered here is that rationality should not be treated alongside other norms prescribing behaviour, as (...) it cannot be accounted for in the same terms. Instead of ascribing rationality a robust role in a philosophical understanding of behaviour, it should be assigned a more modest one: its function should be located not in the context of explaining and predicting behaviour, but in the context of narratives folk psychological interpretation offers. (shrink)

Our paper consists of three parts. In the first part we explain the concept of mental fictionalism. In the second part, we present the various versions of fictionalism and their main sources of motivation.We do this because in the third part we argue that mental fictionalism, as opposed to other versions of fictionalism, is a highly undermotivated theory.

It is common in the literature on classical electrodynamics and relativity theory that the transformation rules for the basic electrodynamical quantities are derived from the pre-assumption that the equations of electrodynamics are covariant against these---unknown---transformation rules. There are several problems to be raised concerning these derivations. This is, however, not our main concern in this paper. Even if these derivations were completely correct, they leave open the following fundamental question: Are the so-obtained transformation rules indeed identical with the true transformation (...) rules of the fundamental electrodynamical quantities? In other words, is it indeed the case that the values calculated from the quantities in one inertial frame by means of the transformation rules we derived are equal to the values of the same quantities obtained by the same operations with the same measuring equipments when they are co-moving with the other inertial frame? This is of course an empirical question. In this paper, we will investigate the problem in a purely theoretical framework by applying what J. S. Bell calls “Lorentzian pedagogy”---according to which the laws of physics in any one reference frame account for all physical phenomena. We will show that the transformation rules of the electrodynamical quantities are indeed identical with the ones obtained by presuming the covariance of the equations of electrodynamics, and that the covariance is indeed satisfied. Beforehand, however, we need to clarify the operational definitions of the fundamental electrodynamical quantities. As we will see, these semantic issues are not as trivial as one might think. (shrink)

While there is a longstanding discussion about the interpretation of the extended, general principle of relativity, there seems to be a consensus that the special principle of relativity is absolutely clear and unproblematic. However, a closer look at the literature on relativistic physics reveals a more confusing picture. There is a huge variety of, sometimes metaphoric, formulations of the relativity principle, and there are different, sometimes controversial, views on its actual content. The aim of this paper is to develop a (...) precise language in order to provide a precise formulation of the principle. In view of the fact that the special relativity principle is considered as a universal meta-law, which must be valid for all physical laws in all situations, we try to keep the formalism as general as possible. The benefit of the formal reconstruction is that it makes explicit all the necessary conceptual components of the principle; it brings out many subtle details and the related conceptual problems. (shrink)

We consider decompositions of the real line into pairwise disjoint Borel pieces so that each piece is closed under addition. How many pieces can there be? We prove among others that the number of pieces is either at most 3 or uncountable, and we show that it is undecidable in and even in the theory if the number of pieces can be uncountable but less than the continuum. We also investigate various versions: what happens if we drop the Borelness requirement, (...) if we replace addition by multiplication, if the pieces are subgroups, if we partition (0, ∞), and so on. (shrink)

BackgroundNarcissism viewed as a personality process rather than a stable trait explains narcissistic functioning as a tool for maintaining a positive self-view. Studying narcissism therefore needs adequate momentary measures for collecting higher frequency longitudinal data in experience sampling method studies. In this study, a shorter version of the Pathological Narcisissm Inventory is offered to measure vulnerable and grandiose narcissistic states, applicable in momentary assessment.MethodsThe measurement tool was tested in three samples. First, we assessed the factor structure and associations with other (...) contemporary measures of narcissism in a cross-sectional design on one English speaking and one Hungarian sample. Second, we conducted a five-day long experience sampling method study with a total of 15 measurement points.ResultsBased on structural equation modelling and multilevel analyses, the results suggest that the measure has adequate psychometric properties in both the within and between subject levels as well as acceptable convergent and discriminant validity.ConclusionsThe Pathological Narcissism Inventory – State Version can be a useful tool in momentary data collection enabling the examination of personality processes behind narcissistic functioning. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend the main claims of our earlier paper “Mental Fictionalism as an Undermotivated Theory” (in The Monist) from Gábor Bács’s criticism, which appeared in his “Mental fictionalism and epiphenomenal qualia” (in Dialectica). In our earlier paper, we tried to show that mental fictionalism is an undermotivated the-ory, so there is no good reason to give up the realist approach to the folk psychological discourse. The core of Bács’s criticism consists in that our argumentation rests on an (...) equivocation concerning the folk psychological concepts of conscious experiences. In our present argumentation, at first, we shortly recapitulate our earlier argumentation and Bács’s main objection to it. After that, we argue against the case of equivocation, claiming that it rests on a highly implausible and unsupported verificationist approach. Lastly, in answering another remark of Bács’s, we discuss the possibility of a realist mental fic-tionalism and conclude that it is an incoherent standpoint. (shrink)

Neuroenhancement involves the use of neurotechnologies to improve cognitive, affective or behavioural functioning, where these are not judged to be clinically impaired. Questions about enhancement have become one of the key topics of neuroethics over the past decade. The current study draws on in-depth public engagement activities in ten European countries giving a bottom-up perspective on the ethics and desirability of enhancement. This informed the design of an online contrastive vignette experiment that was administered to representative samples of 1000 respondents (...) in the ten countries and the United States. The experiment investigated how the gender of the protagonist, his or her level of performance, the efficacy of the enhancer and the mode of enhancement affected support for neuroenhancement in both educational and employment contexts. Of these, higher efficacy and lower performance were found to increase willingness to support enhancement. A series of commonly articulated claims about the individual and societal dimensions of neuroenhancement were derived from the public engagement activities. Underlying these claims, multivariate analysis identified two social values. The Societal/protective highlights counter normative consequences and opposes the use enhancers. The Individual/proactionary highlights opportunities and supports use. For most respondents these values are not mutually exclusive. This suggests that for many neuroenhancement is viewed simultaneously as a source of both promise and concern. (shrink)

This paper is a further consideration of Hemmo and Shenker’s ideas about the proper conceptual characterization of macrostates in statistical mechanics. We provide two formulations of how macrostates come about as elements of certain partitions of the system’s phase space imposed on by the interaction between the system and an observer, and we show that these two formulations are mathematically equivalent. We also reflect on conceptual issues regarding the relationship of macrostates to distinguishability, thermodynamic regularity, observer dependence, and the general (...) phenomenon of measurement. (shrink)

Receptive Spirit develops the thesis that the notion of self-induced mental activity at the heart of German idealism necessitated a radical rethinking of humans’ dependence on culturally transmitted models of thought, evaluation, and creativity. The chapters of the book examine paradigmatic attempts undertaken by German idealist thinkers to reconcile spontaneous mental activity with receptivity to culturally transmitted models. The book maps the ramifications of this problematic in Kant’s theory of aesthetic experience, Fichte’s and Hegel’s views on the historical character of (...) philosophy, the Fichtean model of philosophical communication, and Friedrich Schlegel’s theory and practice of literary communication and criticism. Drawing on Gadamer and McDowell, I argue that the conceptual framework established by the Idealists remains indispensable for orientation in the contemporary intellectual landscape. (See the PDF file below for a synopsis). (shrink)

While Schelling’s anticipation of Freudian psychoanalysis is well established, it has thus far gone unnoticed that Schelling’s ideas also proved fruitful in the context of a distinctively philosophical theory of the psyche developed by a younger contemporary of Freud. During the 1920s Helmuth Plessner, a key figure of philosophical anthropology, outlined a complex conception of the psyche as an individualized, inner region of reality. Although Plessner did not present his philosophical psychology in a systematic form, its building blocks can be (...) found in The Unity of the Senses, The Limits of Community, and Levels of Organic Life and the Human, among other writings. Moreover, Plessner left a clue as to how these building blocks fit together, which suggests that Plessner viewed his philosophical psychology as structurally analogous to the model of personality outlined in Schelling’s 1809 treatise on human freedom. I propose that Plessner sought to formulate an alternative to both idealism and realism about the psyche that might reconcile the insights motivating these rival positions. Schelling provided Plessner with a workable model for such a reconciliation. After reviewing textual evidence for my hypothesis, I sketch Schelling’s predecessor theory. Based on the Schellingian template, I then reconstruct Plessner’s non-reductively naturalistic theory of the psyche, which aligns the real bodily ground of the psyche with its ideal existence. Highlighting the strengths of Plessner’s philosophical psychology against the foil of Paul Ricoeur’s and John McDowell’s relevant arguments, I argue that the theory reconstructed here deserves contemporary consideration as a plausible contender. –––– NOTE: It was only after publication of this article that I came across an important piece of biographical evidence in support of my claim about the significance of Schelling's Freiheitsschrift for Plessner's philosophical psychology. In 1923, Max Scheler claimed to be powerfully impressed by two of his recent readings, namely, Adolf von Harnack’s major study on the second-century Christian heretic Marcion and Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift (Peter Wust, “Schelers Lehre vom Menschen,” Das Neue Reich 9 [1928–29], 138, quoted in Guido Cusinato, “Schelling come precursore dell’antropologia filosofica del Novecento,” Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, 9/2 [2010], 64.). Given that Scheler and Plessner were in constant intense exchange during the relevant period, it seems likely that Plessner’s invocation of Marcion in the concluding passage of Levels of Organic Life and the Human reflects a familiarity with that author that was mediated by Scheler’s reading of Harnack. By the same token, Scheler’s praise for Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift in 1923, along with the textual indications noted in my paper, suggests that the Freiheitsschrift was very much present on Plessner's intellectual horizon when he referred to “the ur-ground character, or better said un-ground character of the psyche” in The Limits of Community, which was published a year later. (Whether it was Scheler who alerted Plessner to the Freiheitsschrift or the other way around is a moot question.). (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the first and the third premises of the zombie argument cannot be jointly true: zombies are either inconceivable beings or the possible existence of them does not threaten the physicalist standpoint. The tenability of the premises in question depends on how we understand the concept of a zombie. In the paper, I examine three popular candidates to this concept, namely zombies are creatures who lack consciousness, but are identical to us in their (a) functional (...) organization, (b) entire physical makeup, and (c) microphysical structure. The main aim of the paper is to argue that none of these conceptions conveys a consistent zombie-concept to us, which, at the same time, would be dangerous for physicalism. In the conclusion, I argue that the source of this failure can be found in the logical fallaciousness of the argument, namely the premises simply presuppose the truth of the conclusion. (shrink)

Özet Kuzey Kıbrıs emek piyasası üzerine yapılan çalışmalar, toplumsal cinsiyet temelli mesleki ayrışmayı kadının işgücüne düşük katılımını etkileyen en önemli sebeplerden biri olarak tespit etmiştir. Bu çalışma 11 yıl içerisinde bu tespitten yola çıkarak Kuzey Kıbrıs emek piyasasındaki mesleki ayrışmanın büyüklüğünü, zaman içerisindeki değişimini ve bu değişimin kaynaklarını araştırmayı amaçlamaktadır.Ayrışma, Hanehalkı İşgücü Anketi verileri kullanılarak 9 ana mesleki grup için genel, kırsal ve kensel bölgelerde ölçülmüştür. Çalışma bulguları, tüm bölgelerde toplumsal cinsiyete dayalı mesleki ayrışmanın yüksek ve yaygın olduğunu göstermiştir. İndeksin (...) ayrıştırılması artan ayrışmanın temel sebebinin net ayrışmadan, yani bireysel meslekler içindeki kadın erkek oranında meydana gelen değişmeden, kaynaklandığını göstermiştir. Yüksek ve yaygın olan mesleki toplumsal cinsiyet ayrışmasının, emek piyasasının kadın ve erkek meslekleri olarak katmanlaşmasına sebep olduğu, bunun da kadının meslek grupları arasında hareketinin kısıtlanmasına yol açarak işgücüne katılımını olumsuz etkilediği sonucuna varılmıştır. (shrink)

This study explored the unique effect of fathers’ parenting behaviors and the quality of co-parenting described as the degree of consistency between paternal and maternal parenting behaviors on children’s academic self-efficacy. The power of both pancultural parenting behaviors and specific parenting controlling behaviors that are relatively common in Turkish culture in predicting academic self-efficacy was tested. A total of 1,931 children completed measures of parenting behaviors and academic self-efficacy in math and literature courses in their school. Overall, girls reported higher (...) levels of literature self-efficacy, whereas boys reported higher levels of math self-efficacy. Compared to boys, girls perceived higher levels of positive parenting behaviors from both their fathers and mothers. The results of the regression analyses showed that, whereas father warmth had stronger effects on boys’ math self-efficacy, mother warmth had stronger effects on girls’ literature self-efficacy. Examination of the effects of co-parenting quality demonstrated that children with positively consistent parents reported the highest level of academic self-efficacy, whereas those having negatively consistent parents had the lowest level of academic self-efficacy. Analyses on inconsistent co-parenting, however, yielded compensatory effects, which were similar to positively consistent parents, and deterioration effects, which were similar to negatively consistent parents depending on the gender of parent and child, domain of parenting behavior, and academic efficacy. This study contributed to the current literature by showing the unique role of fathers over and beyond mothers, and confirmed the importance of positive parenting and parenting consistency in promoting children’s academic efficacy. Cultural and practical implications of the findings were discussed. (shrink)

Esta obra trata da recepção do pensamento de Nietzsche na Itália, marcada por vários pontos de inflexão. Ligada, de início, ao nome de Gabriele D'Annunzio, a fortuna de sua obra toma outra direção com Benedetto Croce, para ser uma vez mais redirecionada com Giovanni Gentile. Os socialistas, porém, para ela abrem um novo caminho, que os fascistas se empenham rapidamente em desviar. Na cena acadêmica, a partir do final dos anos 1920, trabalhos vêm operar uma reviravolta na abordagem do pensamento (...) nietzschiano, abordagem essa que, na década de 1960, será outra vez revista com a interpretação heideggeriana. Ponto de inflexão maior, porém, constitui a edição crítica das obras completas do filósofo e a fundação dos Nietzsche-Studien. (shrink)

Muammar b. Abbād al-Sulamī (d.215/830) was one of the most influential figures of his time in terms of recognizing things and making sense of the changes in the universe, which occupies an important place in Islamic thought. Muammar, who was a Basra Mu'tazilite, appears especially with his naturalistic ideas. What makes him stand out is that he also embraced atomism. Although the atomist conception was of foreign origin, the theologians revised it according to their theological views. This view was also (...) presented as a proof of God’s constant activity in the universe. Muammar, who also defined substance, body and accident, which are the basic concepts of kalam cosmology, influenced other theologians, especially with his definition of body. For Muammar, things have a nature. The body creates its accidents as a result of its own nature. Ultimately, in his thought, it is God who gives this nature to the body. Therefore, he accepts that the functioning of the universe takes place within the framework of the laws that God has set in the universe. This idea of Muammar’s about the nature of bodies is actually to demonstrate that the universe functions in a tremendous way in this way. The concept of māna, which is based on Muammar’s thought, occupies an important place at this point. With this concept, which is identified with the understanding of nature, he aimed to exclude the essence of God from the beings. In his view, this concept is also active when it comes to God’s attributes. For him, that’s why God is the wise and the powerful by means of the knowledge and the power that He possesses through the māna. According to Muammar, māna means cause. He argues that the separation of a moving object from an immobile object is the result of a māna. Therefore, objects are also differentiated from each other through a māna. A māna can exist with a māna, which brings forth the idea of the infinity of māna. However, the infinity of māna does not mean the infinity of things. Muammar’s most criticized point is the nature of objects and the fact that they undergo change as a result of this nature, that is, they create their accidents. In this case, the concept of continuous re-creation, which is generally accepted in theology, does not fit Muammar’s system. For Muammar, there is a system based on cause and effect. Although there are criticisms that this relationship he defended belongs to a strict determinist approach, in fact, it can be said that he was concerned with excluding God from situations that take place on the plane of time and space, such as movement and change. Compared to other contemporary theologians who held naturalistic views like him, Muammar’s justification of nature on the basis of māna sets him apart from the others. (shrink)

A widespread view among physicists is that Bell’s theorem rests on an implicit assumption of “classicality,” in addition to locality. According to this understanding, the violation of Bell’s inequalities poses no challenge to locality, but simply reinforces the fact that quantum mechanics is not classical. The paper provides a critical analysis of this view. First we characterize the notion of classicality in probabilistic terms. We argue that classicality thus construed has nothing to do with the validity of classical physics, nor (...) of classical probability theory, contrary to what many believe. At the same time, we show that the probabilistic notion of classicality is not an additional premise of Bell’s theorem, but a mathematical corollary of locality in conjunction with the standard auxiliary assumptions of Bell. Accordingly, any theory that claims to get around the derivation of Bell’s inequalities by giving up classicality, in fact has to give up one of those standard assumptions. As an illustration of this, we look at two recent interpretations of quantum mechanics, Reinhard Werner’s operational quantum mechanics and Robert Griffiths’ consistent histories approach, that are claimed to be local and non-classical, and identify which of the standard assumptions of Bell’s theorem each of them is forced to give up. We claim that while in operational quantum mechanics the Common Cause Principle is violated, the consistent histories approach is conspiratorial. Finally, we relate these two options to the idea of realism, a notion that is also often identified as an implicit assumption of Bell’s theorem. (shrink)

In this paper we analyze and discuss Jennifer Saul’s account of the famous Gricean notions of ‘what is said’ and ‘what is implicated’ and the alleged conflict between them and the so- called Speaker- Meaning Exhaustiveness Thesis (SMET), which is standardly attributed to Grice in the literature. SMET declares that speaker- meaning divides exhaustively into what is said and what is (conventionally or nonconventionally) implicated by the speaker. After a detailed interpretation of Saul’s position, we argue that her analysis partly (...) misconstrues the relation between Grice’s theory of speaker- meaning and his normative account of conversational implicature. First of all, because SMET is not a genuine part of the Gricean theory of language and meaning – Grice was never committed to it. Secondly, Saul’s interpretation of the Gricean account of conversational implicature does not reflect accurately his original ideas. Although we agree with Saul that conversational implicature has an essential normative aspect, her account cannot capture well the real nature of this normativity, since it does not identify its source and does not delineate its scope. Finally, we present an alternative, speaker- oriented normative interpretation of Grice’s account of conversational implicatures, and argue that it fits better with the Gricean picture of communication and handles better the various problematic cases of conversational implicature than Saul’s mainly audience- oriented interpretation. (shrink)

In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant invokes the moral law as an underived fact of reason. The aim of this article is to explore the highly debated role of the fact of reason and the nature of this fact, which apparently defies the senses of actuality commonly associated with empirical facts and objective entities. Following David Sussman's interpretation, I argue that the fact of reason not only marks the abandonment of deduction of the moral law but illustrates that the (...) failure to ground the moral law does not undermine its unconditional authority. Therefore, I claim that rather than signifying a methodological maneuver to get out of the circle that Kant admits to be entrapped, it operates as immanent, dynamic and an aporetic facticity. This perspective allows seeing its heuristic function for keeping intact the aporia that structures morality and offers away of coming into the circle of morality. (shrink)

J.C. Nyíri’s work is well-known for his interpretation of Wittgenstein as a conservative thinker. Nevertheless, his reading of Wittgenstein is only one strand, even if presumably the most influential one, in his general interpretation of Austro-Hungarian philosophy. Therefore his reading of Wittgenstein is best understood if viewed as part of a complex, sociologically inspired picture of Austrian philosophy. In this introductory essay I present Nyíri’s work as an exercise in the sociology of philosophical knowledge, broadly understood, and provide a unified (...) view on his attempt by exploring its various strands. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to show that the privacy of conscious experience is inconsistent with any kind of physicalism. That is, if you are a physicalist, then you have to deny that more than one subject cannot undergo the very same conscious experience. In the first part of the paper we define the concepts of privacy and physicalism. In the second part we delineate two thought experiments in which two subjects undergo the same kind of conscious experience in (...) such a way that all the physical processes responsible for their experiences are numerically the same. Based on the thought experiments and their interpretations we present our argument for the inconsistency of the privacy of experience with physicalism in the third part of the paper. In the final part we defend our argumentation against some objections. (shrink)